Breaking 1-06-21: MAGA terrorist attack on Capitol

You can change the word liberal to conservative and change Trump to Obama, Clinton or Biden and have the same cartoon. Weak effort on your part.

 

Brian Leiter is one of the most left-leaning law professors in the U.S., and even he is complimentary about the arguments made in the Goldsmith essay:

Donald Trump is one of the worst human beings alive, but it's not simple to prosecute him for his attempt to overturn the 2020 election
This short essay by Harvard law professor Jack Goldsmith gives a good explanation of why the decision to prosecute Trump is so fraught, contrary to various traditional and social media blowhards.

Posted by Brian Leiter on June 21, 2022 at 08:23 AM
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https://leiterreports.typepad.com/b...not-simple-to-prosecute-him-for-his-atte.html

 

The choice would be momentous for the country, but we're actually making momentous choices all the time. You don't need to go back to Reconstruction to find a decision where the stakes are as high. Overturning Roe v Wade will be comparably as impactful and 5 well-placed officials did it without any check. Waging an economic war on Russia over the invasion of Ukraine has significant present and future consequences, and Biden made the call without much apparent hand-wringing. Hell, Trump's choice to undermine democracy with a scheme to undermine the integrity of elections has far-reaching consequences, and he's not even in government. Sure, it's fraught. Decisions at the top of government in a global hegemon will always be fraught. Why worry so much about this one? Pray for wisdom, make a decision, and let's go.

Can't speak to the motives of others, but I think there are plenty of non-revenge motives to prosecute here. Like with other crimes, you prosecute to enforce a deterrent effect, to show other political crooks that we will go after them if they mess with our elections. You prosecute for an incapacitory effect, that Trump can't continue destroying democracy if he's in jail for his past crimes. There is some restitution effect from proving Trump's guilt, by stopping the eroding effect of the doubt he's sown. I doubt there's any rehabilitation effect here because Trump is really old and he's probably not open to rehabilitating anyway. And finally, there is the effect variably known as 'vengeance' or 'justice' -- you prosecute because he did wrong.

But, add to your cons an attempt by a later Republican administration to criminally prosecute a prominent Democrat in revenge, potentially setting off a vicious cycle of retribution.

Even so, I feel like the decision is easy to make, even if the path it sets us down is hard. The path of not indicting is harder.

 

sometimes “bury the hatchet” is the right choice

 

Good point about the con of Republicans trying to prosecute Dems any chance they get.

A couple of thoughts on that... One is they already seem to do that. I'm not sure that if they have the chance to do it again, they would look back and say to themselves that since Trump wasn't prosecuted, we'll hold off on going after Hillary one more time.

The second thought is that if a Democrat did something like Trump did, I would hope the Republicans (and other Democrats) would prosecute.

 

Of course it's not simple. What is simple is how our judicial system assumes you can always find a jury that has no prior knowledge of a case or figure, and will have no bias. Our system also assumes that prosecutors will always just make solid judgements on who they prosecute, and never have issues worrying about their safety & job security if they prosecute a public figure at that level.

There's also the issue of time, and how everything (because of Constitutional rights of the executive branch) will have to be argued at the highest level of the court throughout the proceeding.

This is EXACTLY why the impeachment power was given to Congress. The framers knew that the judicial system would be a slog for someone at that level so they gave Congress the ability to at the very least remove that figure from government permanently. The Republicans in the Senate failed to do that when they absolutely should have... so here we are, and Merrick Garland has to either be complicit in clear crimes where if he does nothing it literally invites another round of trying to overthrow our government, or he does the right thing and brings charges to a former president that he knows will be a giant mess and will almost certainly result in a hung jury, and could even threaten his life or the life of those trying Trump.

So yeah... it won't be easy, but the alternative is worse. The Republicans in the Senate though are at fault 100%. They could have avoided Trump ever being put on trial with the simple notion that he couldn't run in 2024 or in the future.... HOW FREAKING HARD WAS THAT FOR THEM TO DO!!!

 

Law and Order folk should respect laws and prosecution from the top-down.

These words always gets mixed up with biases. Instead of "accountability", it's now "punishment". When your guy is down, it's now about "healing" and "forgiveness".

America is the weirdest when it comes to worshiping the elites. Folks on the bottom are taught to be respectful, forgiving and fair.

You water down the laws for corruption and white collar crime, and the folks at the top rarely get caught or convicted, thus they avoid triggering the folks at the bottom.

I'm still amazed how peasants with ammo and riot gear didn't "peacefully gather" at Wall Street when it melted down. Similar with tech mavens and crypto shills in the last couple years when they melted down or screwed retail over.

Great training and indoctrination, I suppose. I guess cable news is slowly weaponizing that aspect...

 

this piece in the Federalist today reminded me of your post from Saturday

Hillary Clinton Doubts Election Results While Claiming Doing So Is Treason

https://thefederalist.com/2022/06/21/hillary-clinton-doubts-election-results-while-claiming-doing-so-is-treason/

excerpt:

Hillary Clinton needs to sit down, shut up, and stay out of the public sphere forever.

The Russia collusion hoax she paid for and promoted is the reason Donald Trump and some of his voters believed (and maybe still do) that enemies of the former president hacked Dominion voting machines, flooded battleground states with counterfeit ballots, and engaged in other Machiavellian machinations to steal the 2020 election. Yet Clinton plays the puritan, blaming Trump’s refusal to accept Joe Biden’s victory as the cause of the violence that erupted at the capitol on January 6, 2021—all while she continues to insinuate some six years later that the presidency was stolen from her.
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more at the link

 

So the Federalist opinion piece is premised on a falsehood.

The Russian collusion wasn't a hoax. It was proven. It wasn't criminal, in part only because in this case ignorance of the law is actually an excuse. One of the reasons that prosecution was recommended against was because it would be difficult to prove the Trump campaign knew their interaction with Russian parties was actually illegal before doing it.

Secondly, Hillary didn't advocate that legally cast votes not be counted. Her claim was the Russian propaganda campaign caused people to turn against her and without that she would have won.

Thirdly, it gives the appearance of sexism to tell the female to shut up and stay out of it.

Fourth, Hillary should should shut up and stay out of it.

 

This is simply a false piece. I really don't put much stock in the federalist or the opinion pieces on it given the skew and bias.

Clinton is correct that the Russians tried to influence the US elections. To what degree they were successful or what coordination they had with Trump is unknown, but it is more than likely that the release of emails was done by foreign adversaries looking to have Trump as president vs Clinton.

That is very different than Trump & Co trying to overturn the results of an election they clearly lost and intentionally lied (and continue to lie) about.

 

What if the hatchet is threatening to come back and chop you up in two years?

 

I knew folks would like that one

 

Sadly, your point is lost on trumpers when they buy this garbage and then spew it out as fact

 

I'm 100% sure @Os Trigonum is not a Trumper.

Most Republicans would read a piece like this and find it to be true I suspect.

 

that's the nicest thing anyone has ever said about me.

although with that said, I still think that sore loser Hillary and virtually the entire Democratic establishment pretty much worked to undermine the Trump administration from the get-go, to a degree that goes beyond your routine, ordinary, run-of-the-mill loyal opposition partisanship. One does not have to be a Republican to see this. So the grain of truth in the Federalist piece remains . . . and one take-home lesson of the entire Trump Era™ for the Dems is that you reap what you sow.

 

Yeah I don't see it that way. Usually the Republican playbook is "Make sure he's a one-term president" which is what they tried to do to Obama but opposing everything he did even when it was what they wanted. That's undermining a president. Not letting him staff his administration is undermining.

While the Dems certainly were no friend to Trump, and wanted him out, they didn't undermine him. They didn't try to tank the economy intentionally to make him look bad. And Trump created his own mess by lying to the FBI and committing obstruction of justice. It's also clear he never came clean on the full connections with Russia or could explain why so many people in his campaign had strange contacts with Russian agents. Or why Trump himself took a pro-Putin stance.

 

I should have been clear, that wasn't directed at him.....I dont always agree with Os, but that wasn't my intention

 

nice summary here, took me a bit of digging. Also don't shoot the messenger, I don't often if ever agree with this blogger's takes on lots of issues, but here he provides a service.

Presidential Impeachment/Removal Plans, 2016 to 2020

https://ethicsalarms.com/presidential-impeachment-removal-plans-2016-to-the-present/

excerpt:

There have been 20 Plans to abuse various processes, laws and theories, all put forward and promoted by members of the Democratic Party/”resistance”/mainstream news media alliance since President Trump’s election in November of 2016. This page has been added to the references on the Ethics Alarms home page for easy reference, and also because I view this conduct by that group to be the most irresponsible, undemocratic and dangerous attack on our national values and institutions at least since the 19th century.

The desired effect of this barrage, apart from serving the goal of removing an elected President without the bother (and risk) of an election, has been to make it impossible for the President to govern, and to destroy his support among the public. So far, neither of these goals have been achieved

When Plan S, which late novelist Robert Ludlum might have called “The Ukrainian Perversion” if it had been one of his novels, fails like the rest, or if President Trump is re-elected, the list will keep growing. As scholar Victor Hanson Davis has pointed out, the sheer number of these successive plans belies the claim that this is not an ongoing attempt at a soft coup.

The real theory in play is that Donald Trump daring to be President is itself impeachable conduct.
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more at the link.

Again, the author is no fan of Trump, in fact I located this page using his "Don't make me defend Trump" tagline.

 

Catching up on the 1/6 cliff notes from today........I didn't realize Rudy, Bannon and Trump called certain people out by name and then went and protested at each of there houses, Trump even gave out phone numbers to the GOP who would not do his bidding. There are quite a bit of facts that I didn't realize until this started. Its one thing to hear it from the left, or CNN but when you have supporters of trump who are willing to testify that they would not do his bidding, it shines the conversation in a different light, I don't think "EVERY" republican acts the way of MGT or Rudy or Gaetz so that was refreshing. What scares me is each one of those states have tried to gerrymander, put people in office who would do what trump was asking and have the same mindset to lie and manipulate the process. The next time we might not be as lucky, the hearings are laying out the facts in plain language that IMHO should be used to file charges, but alas, I doubt we will, to prove it in a court of law with a jury that is not leaning one way or another will be almost impossible....plus the guy truly is Teflon Don. All I can hope for is they eat each other alive, I hope Desantos runs for prez and so does Donald so they can tear each other apart.